Monthly archives: March 2013


Open Source Career Taster Days (1st of 3) – London 13/05/13

BCSWomen SG logo Open Source Specialist Group logo
Fossbox logo Flossie logo

A series of three one day workshops for women returners aimed at raising awareness of Open Source development as a dual skillset or second career.

The first workshop will be held on 13th May 2013, 10:00 – 13th May 2013, 17:00 at BCS, 1st Floor, The Davidson Buidling, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA, London.

See the BCS Events calendar page:  http://www.bcs.org/content/conEvent/7751

and the registration page:  http://www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/50183

The course will aim to build awareness and confidence and help women take some first steps either towards learning to code or to update existing skills and to learn how they might contribute to Open Source projects. It will aim to raise awareness of self-training opportunities and of Open Source career paths and entry points.

Day 1: Programming for mobile devices using AppInventor

  • Introduction to FLOSS culture and licensing models
  • Programming for Android mobile devices using MIT AppInventor
  • Panel discussion – What is it like working in Open Source communities and in technology generally?

Day 2: Introduction to Open Source and Git

  • Introduction to Open Source projects and resources
  • How are Open Source projects organised? Brief overview of development roles (feedback, support, bug reporting, new feature requests, writing/updating software/creating artwork/documentation/translation). Introduction to development methods: test driven, agile
  • Introduction to Git

Day 3: Introduction to Python

  • Overview of current programming languages and their uses
  • Introduction to Python
  • Resources for next steps
  • Talks by women working in the industry and networking

OpenTech 2013 – London 18/05/2013

OpenTech 2013 is an informal, low cost, one-day conference on slightly different approaches to technology, experience and democracy. Talks by people who work on things that matter, guarantees a day of thoughtful talks leading to conversations with friends.

Opentech

Besides the sessions which will challenge or inspire, there’s plenty of time to talk in the bar with friends both old and new.

OpenTech 2013 is sponsored by the Open Data Institute.


Chip Hack – London 20-21/3/2013 1

Chip Hack is a two day hands-on workshop on programming FPGAs aimed at complete beginners.

Led by a team of experienced FPGA designers, and working with the DE0-nano board, you’ll start with simple hardware designs to control LED’s counters and push buttons and move on to a UART transmitter and (for the more ambitious) receiver.

Chip Hack

The event coincides with Hardware Freedom Day (http://www.hfday.org) and you’ll be using open source designs throughout the weekend. In the final session you will see how to bring up a complete ready-made OpenRISC system-on-chip.

No HDL or FPGA programming experience is required, but you will need to have some programming experience and an understanding of basic digital electronics.

The workshop is sponsored by Embecosm, and will run at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in Acton Street, London.


Making use of OpenStreetMap Data – Southampton 18/3/2013 1

Monday 18th March 2013

Speaker: Nick Whitelegg

Time: 6.00pm for 6.30pm

Venue: Southampton Solent University, Reginald Mitchell Building, third floor, room RM326, SO14 0RD
Maps: Directions and maps at www.solent.ac.uk

Joint with the BCS Hampshire Branch, and Southampton Solent University

OpenStreetMap

This event is free, open to all, but please if possible book through the BCS website https://events.bcs.org/book/584/ , when available, both for BCS members and non-members for arranging refreshments, and particularly as the numbers are limited.

This technically-focused talk will introduce what the OpenStreetMap project is all about, but focus on how to use the data in your own projects.
The OpenStreetMap API will be introduced along with a number of tools for making use of the data, such as Osmosis, osm2pgsql, Mapnik and kothic-js.

The Freemap site and Android apps will be introduced as examples of third-party software making use of OSM data.

Nick Whitelegg is a senior lecturer in Computing (Web Development) at Southampton Solent University and teaches on a range of undergraduate software development courses including Java and web development. He has contributed software and data to the OpenStreetMap mapping project and has developed an open source mapping site and associated tools for walkers.


Hadoop Session – London 01/05/2013 1

The Open Source Specialist Group (OSSG) will be holding an event on Apache Hadoop from 1800 hours at the BCS Central London Offices, First Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA ( http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/london-office-guide.pdf).

Software Practice Advancement Specialist Group

This event is a joint meeting with the BCS SPA SG (Software Practice Advancement Specialist Group, http://bcs-spa.org).

This bookable event is free and open to all with buffet and refreshments.

Students are particularly welcome to attend.

Closing date for booking is 1st May at 09:00 am.

Apache Hadoop

Speakers

Shashin Shah (LinkedIn profile) and Christy Kulasingam (LinkedIn profile) of Onepoint IQ

Timings

18:00 – Registration & buffet
18:30 – Presentation
20:00 – Networking Session

Synopsis

Discover and appreciate the rising importance and prominence of the Open Source Apache Hadoop ecosystem in the Big Data space. Come and learn about the history of Hadoop, what business challenges it solves, why it has such widespread adoption not seen before in the Open Source world, and how innovative solutions from leading vendors such as MapR are built on top of Apache Hadoop. Session will comprise of presentations and demonstrations of the Hadoop ecosystem.

About the Speakers

Shashin and Christy have over 50 years combined experience helping major clients with their Business & IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture and Open Source covering multiple industry verticals on major business and technology transformation projects.

Shashin and Christy are co-founders off Onepoint IQ, a niche consulting company focused on helping clients realize the value from data (big and small).

Update (06 May)

Shashin and Christy have kindly shared the slides from their presentation: